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Police charge babysitters

Tots found in 2 separate cases

Two Butler women who were supposed to be watching over toddlers left in their care instead allegedly fell asleep on the job.

Butler police said in each case the 2-year-olds managed to get out of their homes and wander away. Neighbors and passers-by found both children and neither was hurt.

Police this week charged both Jessica M. Masdea, 26, and Shayna M. McDowell, 30, with child endangerment in the separate cases.

McDowell was charged Wednesday for letting a boy, dressed in a diaper and a T-shirt, get out of her home on North Elm Street on May 21.

Three motorists about 10 a.m. found the child alone on a sidewalk near East Penn and North Main streets, police said. The witnesses drove around the block and returned to find the boy in a parking lot. They knocked on the doors at a nearby apartment complex but could not find his parents.

The boy’s parents eventually drove up and took him home, according to court documents.

Police spoke to the boy’s father at the home. He said that he had left his son in McDowell’s care. An officer went upstairs and found the defendant, who lives at the house, in bed sleeping.

After being awakened, documents said, she admitted she was supposed to be watching the child and asked “if something had happened.”

Police on Saturday charged Masdea for allowing a boy to walk away May 23 from her home in the 400 block of Virginia Avenue.

Police were called shortly before 11 a.m. after neighbors reported seeing a toddler running around unattended in the area of West Wayne and Krut streets, according to court documents.

The neighbors had the 2-year-old boy with them when police got there. The boy was wearing only a shirt and a soiled diaper.

Police went to the child’s home and learned that Masdea was supposed to be caring for the boy. She told police that she had been sleeping and she had no idea how the child got out of the house.

Police do not know how long the infant was left unattended. Court documents did not indicate the relationship between the defendant and the child.

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